IM Running

Question:

What really happens in the IM Marathon?

Reading IMFL reports from various people, once again the common theme of losing significant time on the run appears. It is apparent even w/ people that claim to take the bike "easy" and are veteren IMers. What is the physiological change that occurs? Is it the accumulation of lactate, the depletion of muscluar energy stores (glycogen) or something else? I agree w/ Gordo that the long days are important in prepping. Do they help overcome the lactate or nutrition issue? If it is lactate, would not more training near LT help (which is what many people do and does not appear to help). Just trying to put pieces of the puzzle together.

-- Tondo

Answer:

I think a lot of people are JFT (tired). It's a long day out there.

For the run -- Have a look at the Doodes thread where I lay out my personal run strategy for IM run success. To sum it up -- the key goal is to create a durable set of legs with outstanding overall aerobic fitness -- from a run point of view...

  1. gradually, safely, build up your running frequency // this can take many seasons

  2. address your personal nutritional limiters

  3. do your long runs in the hills to build all around leg strength

  4. focus on excellent bike aerobic power and strength endurance (not tempo endurance as many interpret this statement -- I'm talking CP360).
I'd say that's the bulk of it -- once you have that rolling then you can creep the overall steady-state running volume up. The next step after that is some faster work but that's pretty elite stuff. Most folks in IM are running so far below their existing aerobic run fitness that we are really looking to overall endurance (best trained on the bike) and durability (best trained with frequency).

That's the way I see it.

gordo

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